If you only have time to take in one of Moscow’s selection of world-class museums, choose the Museum of Russian Impressionism, where the vast permanent collection includes works by some of the world’s most renowned artists. Among the paintings are “At Lake Maggiore” (1895) by Nikolai Dubovskoy; “The Overgrown Pond” (1910) by Nikolai Clodt; “Winter in the Urals” (1972) by Kim Britov; “Birches” (1963) by Vyacheslav Fyodorov; and “A Park in Early Autumn” (1970) by Boris Gladchenko.

Located on Leningradskiy, in a former Bolshevik chocolate factory run by a French confectioner, the museum’s collection was founded on pieces from founder Boris Mints’ personal collection. Arranged chronologically, the earliest painting is “The Park” by Konstantin Korovin, created in the 1880s. Many of the works housed in the museum had been dispersed into private collections around the world, and returned to Russia over the past few years.

Book Cover © Repeater Books

To bring along on your flight: The Adventures of Owen Hatherley in the Post-Soviet Space (Repeater, 2018) by Owen Hatherley. The author is a well-known commentator on aesthetics and politics whose work appears in Architectural Review, The Guardian and New Humanist. Exploring the post-USSR world while following a path from the Baltic Sea to Belarus, and through Ukraine, the Urals and Central Asia, the author looks at the remnants of revolutions and what Communism means today to those living in the shadow of its past.